This invention relates to orienting and feeding apparatus and more particularly to an apparatus for orienting a plurality of like articles having a head and a shank such as screws.
In mass production and assembly line operations using a power tool such as a screw driver for automatically driving articles having a head and a shank such as bolts and screws, it is necessary to rapidly supply to the screw driver one article at a time in a predetermined orientation. Usually, although not necessarily, the articles are oriented in generally parallel side by side relationship with the heads of adjacent articles abutting each other and their shanks depending. Because they have so many edges, such articles are highly susceptible to becoming caught, hung up or misaligned in an orienting apparatus and hence, it is extremely difficult to rapidly and automatically orient such articles to provide an uninterrupted succession of articles with the same orientation.
Several complex devices having many parts have been previously devised for orienting such articles. These devices are expensive to manufacture, require frequent service and frequent replacement of moving parts, are difficult to maintain in satisfactory working order for high speed mass production and assembly operations, and are usually very noisy in operation.